Holden K C, Kuo H H
LaFollette Institute of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison 53706, USA.
Gerontologist. 1996 Jun;36(3):383-90. doi: 10.1093/geront/36.3.383.
We use data from the first wave of the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) to examine the marital histories of this cohort of women and men on the verge of retirement. The legacy of past increases in divorce rates is evident in the complex marital histories of HRS households and the relationship between those histories and current economic status. Couples in a first marriage now make up only one-quarter of black households and fewer than half of all white and Hispanic households. In over one-third of all married-couple households, at least one spouse had a previous marriage that ended in divorce or widowhood. These couples have significantly lower incomes and assets than couples in first marriages. Contrary to the popular notion that private and public insurance better provide for the security of widows than divorced persons, currently widowed households and couples in which the prior marriage of one spouse had ended in widowhood are no better off than are their divorced peers. This holds true for both black and white households. From a single cross-section, one cannot tell what caused these differences in income and wealth across marital status groups although it is clear that women and blacks spend a higher percentage of their lifetime outside of marriage than do men and whites. We also speculate from estimates of widowhood expectations for a subset of married respondents that underestimating the chances of widowhood--because both men and women overestimate their chances of joint survival--may be a factor in the relatively low economic status of widows. Because couples in life-long marriages have been the traditional standard upon which marital property reform and the survivorship rules of private and public programs are based, their diminishing importance among all households raises concern about the protection provided by these institutions against the long-term economic consequences of past and future marital dissolution.
我们使用健康与退休调查（HRS）第一波的数据，来研究这一即将退休的男性和女性群体的婚姻史。过去离婚率上升的遗留影响，在HRS家庭复杂的婚姻史以及这些婚姻史与当前经济状况之间的关系中显而易见。初婚夫妇如今在黑人家庭中仅占四分之一，在所有白人和西班牙裔家庭中占比不到一半。在超过三分之一的已婚夫妇家庭中，至少有一方配偶曾有过以离婚或丧偶告终的前次婚姻。这些夫妇的收入和资产显著低于初婚夫妇。与普遍认为的私人保险和公共保险能更好地保障寡妇而非离婚者经济安全的观念相反，目前丧偶家庭以及一方配偶前次婚姻以丧偶告终的夫妇，经济状况并不比他们的离婚同龄人更好。这在黑人和白人家庭中均是如此。从单一横截面数据来看，尽管很明显女性和黑人一生中未婚的比例高于男性和白人，但无法判断婚姻状况群体之间收入和财富差异的成因。我们还从对部分已婚受访者丧偶预期的估计中推测，低估丧偶几率——因为男性和女性都高估了共同生存的几率——可能是寡妇经济地位相对较低的一个因素。由于终身婚姻中的夫妇一直是婚姻财产改革以及私人和公共项目生存规则所基于的传统标准，他们在所有家庭中的重要性不断下降，这引发了人们对这些制度针对过去和未来婚姻解体的长期经济后果所提供保护的担忧。
